Event Book offers a new view of your iOS calendar

Event Book is a new iOS app from 18 year old student developer and entrepreneur Abhi Ashutosh. It’s available now as a free download from the App Store.

Event Book is designed to replace the default iOS calendar app, and aims to provide a simple, clear, easily-navigable view of the user’s events and calendars.

The app features four main views. Day Book view allows users to see any events that are scheduled to take place on any given day along with a weather report for the local area. The day may be viewed as a summary sorted by calendar or event time, and also as a more traditional “diary” view with blocks representing event timings. Individual events may be tapped on to view their full information, and the information customized as necessary. By default, the app will import all calendars the user has on their phone, including those from external services such as Google Calendar. Events may be assigned to any existing calendar, but unfortunately there does not appear to be a way to add new calendars directly in Event Book itself.

Week Book view displays a summary of any given week. This may be viewed as a list, again sorted by either calendar or event time, or as an overview of the entire week.

Meanwhile, Month Book view displays an overview of the month with a list of events on any given day at the bottom of the screen. The calendar grid in this view is much smaller than it is in the default iOS app, allowing a lot more information to be shown at the bottom of the screen — a good move from a usability perspective, particularly on the small screen on the iPhone.

Finally, List Book view simply shows users a list of events, again sorted either by calendar or event time. All of the possible views allow users to “quick add” new events with basic information, and optionally add extended details such as alarms, calendars, relevant URLs and notes.

As well as the various views, all of which can be used to browse back and forward in time or jump straight to today’s date, the app also features a search function that allows users to find all instances of a particular event name, and also to jump to its details and/or edit it if required. The search function seems a little slow to respond, but otherwise works well.

Event Book doesn’t do anything particularly revolutionary with calendar management, but it does offer a simple, clean and rather elegant alternative to iOS’ default app — for iPhone at least. At present, it does not have native iPad support, which is a shame, but iPhone users will certainly find a lot to like here. The only real missing feature is its seeming inability to create new calendars, but this is a relatively minor issue for those who already have a good organization structure in place. Given that the app is free, there’s certainly no risk for users to give it a try for themselves and see what they think, and it certainly suggests that Abhi Ashutosh may well be an independent developer to watch in the future.

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